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New machines to replace Detroit's ubiquitous broken parking meters are in production and are expected to be installed in the coming months, the city's chief operating officer said.

Rather than paying for a specific parking space, the state-of-the-art system will allow drivers to punch in their license plate number instead of the parking space number. So a person could park in a space, pay for two hours' worth of time and park their car in more than one space during that two-hour window.

"The system is designed to write fewer tickets to give the consumer more options to pay the meter," said Detroit chief operating officer Gary Brown.

The new system will cover about 3,000 spaces, which amounts to about 90% of the city's meters. Detroit's new machines are expected to start arriving in April. The first of them — there will be about 300 parking stations to cover 3,000 spaces — will be installed in the West 7 Mile Road and Livernois Avenue area, Brown said.

The broken parking meters throughout Detroit are well-documented. City officials said last year that half of the city's 3,404 parking meters are broken at any given time.

Councilman Scott Benson said he often hears complaints from people who get tickets at broken meters. Former Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr hiked Detroit's fines for an expired meter ticket to $45 last year.

Benson heard a presentation on the new parking system during council committee meeting on Monday.

"I'm excited about it. I think it has a lot of functionality and possibilities how it could be used," he said. "It sounds like a very progressive and forward-thinking system for the city of Detroit."

Benson said the new system would allow the purchase of bus tickets through the pay stations. It would also allow consumers to buy a "gift card," for lack of a better term, to buy parking time in advance, Benson said.

The Detroit Downtown Development Authority already has approved a $3 million contract to pay for the new system, Brown said.

Brown said the City Council will be asked to approve an ordinance to approve a dynamic pricing system that would allow the city to charge different parking rates for different events, such as the Thanksgiving Day parade or for baseball games.

Benson said he is still studying the proposal and has concerns about how it would affect drivers with limited financial resources.

"We're at least thinking outside the box on how we management our resources and assets," he said.